Push Birth Seizure-edited

Before the seizure,
he sees a light around people
the way I did
when I leaned forward
to push him away from my body
twenty-two years ago. This time
it is he who leans forward,
remembering somewhere
deep in the impenetrable
darkness I can’t enter,
that he could break my back
with his strength, the hard weight
of his body, if he were to fall
fully onto me.

So we dance a kind of
birthing together:
push and lean, push and lean
until we are bound together,
this time without benefit
of life-sustaining cord. We fall
through the slow, patient air
that seems merciful, as though
it is a parable of love,
only with cold
instructions first.

I am a quick study: I cup my hands
under his head as
he bangs it against the flagstone
floor. My hands are bruised,
pummeled, but he would crack
his head otherwise so I don’t feel
any pain as I push-pull,
and wish I had strength
enough to slit open heaven’s
belly to bring him breath.

I don’t cry because I never
do with pain. No one can convince me
that pain and hell go together.
There is no pain in hell,
only measureless time
that you must bargain for.
Here, now, when his skin
is no longer blue,
and his eyes are lupine
silk, I pull him up and I hold him
and then there is heaven:
the beloved in my arms.

Now the air sings its
parables again and I remember,
there was never pain, never hell
only pearls that fell and were lost,
then found and saved.

SHIVERBUSH JONES

This life teases out of you an incongruous song
made of stair steps and questions and flipping of birds.
But the world sings you back to you in thousands of tongues.

The throwing of bowling balls and the spanking of gongs,
the tripping of triplets and the ripping of shirts--
they’re all just a part of your incomplete song.

Vibrations recycle before very long.
And even the thud of your feet in the dirt
the world will sing back to you in thousands of tongues.

The air that you squeeze out of overused lungs.
The cries and the barks and the purrs and the words.
It’s all just a part of your world-wooing song.

We are never alone so much as among.
Each gesture we make this planet records.
And this world sings you back to you in thousands of tongues.

Love itself is fine, as are lust and longing.
And there will come a happy answer from some exotic bird.
When you step outside and engender your songs,
the world sings you back to you in thousands of tongues.

JD Frey — April 15, 2010
JDIEGOFREY@GMAIL.COM